I’ve learned so much about Instagram during my few months using it…

But I’m no expert.

I researched Instagram a lot before using it. Posting schedules, times, hashtags, tags, stories, profile creation, bio, photo editing, etc., etc. There’s a lot. And research always takes a long time.

Yes, I’ve done a lot of researching and practicing, but I am no expert at this. I’m still learning. So of course, my tips and advice for you are only part of this whole thing. I still want to encourage you to do your own research and experimenting.

Just wanted to make that clear. 😉

Okay, so Instagram…a huge visual social platform. It has 1 billion monthly active users. Sure, if you narrow it down to just the authors, it’s greatly decreased. But still…that’s a lot of people. How will you stand out in the crowd?

Let’s start from the beginning…

Setting up your profile…

I’m gonna pretend like you haven’t made an account yet and I’m guiding you along. Sound good? 🙂

Okay, go ahead and make your account. I suggest using a “business” email address, separate from your personal one (I talk about that here).

Your name should be what you use across all your platforms, either your real name or pen name. And your username (i.e. @jenna.terese) should be simple and easy to remember. Try not to use a lot of underscores, periods, or other unecccesary things. The only reason I put a period between my first and middle name was because just @jennaterese was taken.

If your name is taken too, here are some other ideas you can try: a period between your names, adding ‘writer’ or ‘author’, maybe ‘books’ at the beginning or end of your username.

Your profile picture should be a headshot of you, and the same photo you use across all your platforms. The reason you use the same profile photo on all your platforms is so that people can easily recognize you and you have cohesiveness over everything.

Your bio should be short (obviously. I mean, you have a character limit) and summarize what you do and why you do it. And add something about your personality/what you love (i.e. your MBTI type, other hobbies, etc.).

Okay, so just click edit profile and let’s look at the other things there…

• Be sure to add your website URL in the ‘Website’ field. Another thing you can do here (which I recommend over just putting your website) is provide a link to a page with links to your other social platforms. I used Mailchimp to create a landing page with buttons to my Pinterest and Goodreads profiles, plus a button to my website and a subscribe form.
• If you have a Facebook page, connect that.
• In the ‘Category’, put Author.
• In ‘Contact Options’, add your business email and your business phone number if you have one.
• Then in ‘Profile Display’, you decide how much of your contact info you want to show on your profile page. Just choose whatever you’re comfortable with.

Okay, that should be good for now. You can always tweak your profile later, so let’s move on…

Taking photos…

What’s crucial for a consistent, cohesive, aesthetic feed? Filters! I use the VSCO app to edit all my photos. It’s free to make an account, and then you can choose to pay a monthly fee for extra benefits and features. But I’ve found the free version is enough for me. 🙂

Pinterest is a great place to look for VSCO filter “recipes.” Experiment with different ones until you find one that you like. Looking at your favorite Instagram accounts can be good inspiration too, just be sure you’re being unique with your feed.

VSCO makes it easy to edit batches of photos in just a few seconds. Since I take most of my IG photos at one time, I don’t really want to go through each photo and take a few minutes to edit each one. But all you have to do is click on your already edited photo, click the three dots in the bottom right corner, tap ‘copy edits’, tap that edited photo again to unselect it, click on a number of unedited photos, click the three dots, then tap ‘paste edits.” Voila! Super easy!

Another thing super crucial for your photos is lighting. Natural lighting is the best and always preferred, but depending on your house layout you may not have a good spot for that. You can enhance the light you already have by buying a couple white matte boards from a craft store to help reflect light on your subject. I use these for reflecting light and also as the background for all my photos. You can also buy another photography light, like what comes with this tripod that I have. And, to some degree, you make your photos look like they have more natural light on them by increasing the exposure when editing your photos.

You don’t need to buy a fancy, expensive camera to take picture. Now that phones nowadays have better cameras, those work out fine. I use my phone to take all my photos, and it’s been working out well.

Photo prop ideas

If you prefer taking flat-lay photos (like I do), then you’re going to want props. Explore your house to see what you can use. And here are a few other ideas…

• books
• fairy lights
• mugs (with or without a drink in it)
• plants
• blankets or pillows (bonus points if you get blankets that are in your brand colors!)
• notebooks, pens, pencils
• fandom merch (people love this one)
• yourself 😉
• fake flowers
• glitter
• wall art

Posting Schedule

So, when should you post exactly? Of course you’ll want your post to go up when there’s the highest amount of your followers active in the app. You can check to see when most of your followers are active by going to your profile insights, going to ‘Audience’ and scrolling all the way down. There, you will see a stat that shows you what hours of the day most of your followers are active.

Now, if you’re just starting out, there isn’t going to be much in that graph. So to start, here’s a graphic where you can begin from (this graphic is from this post by iMPACT):

Once you start gaining followers, you’ll be able to figure out for yourself what times are best to post.

And, like everything, it’s important to have a consistent posting schedule. It’s generally recommended that you post at minimum once a day on Instagram. I post about once a day, five or six days a week. You can always start out less than this and work up to posting more as you learn more about Instagram.

Here’s an Instagram content scheduling template that I made up in a Google Spreadsheet so you can plan your posts. Here’s a quick explanation of the different fields to fill in:

• Date: The date this post will be posted
• Post Caption. Write at least some notes about what you want to say so you don’t forget when it comes time to post
• Props. This really makes things go a lot faster when you’re taking photos. You already have a list of props so you don’t have to take time later to figure it out.
• Posting Time. What time the photo will be posted
• Hashtags/Tags. What hashtags you’re going to use, and who you’re going to tag in the photo or caption

Another thing you can do along with this is use the app called Preview. Here you can upload all your edited photos that you take. You can arrange them to make sure the aesthetics work, and you can also type the draft of your caption into it. You can create hashtag groups in the app so all you have to do is tap one thing to add a group of hashtags to a caption. At this time, Instagram does not allow Preview to schedule and automatically post content to Instagram. But Preview will give you a notification when it’s time to post if you set the scheduling time and date.

Hashtags

Instagram allows you to put up to 30 hashtags in your post captions. Hashtags put your post in the different hashtag “categories.” People follow hashtags like they follow accounts, so using hashtags will also increase your reach. Here are some ideas as to what to hashtag:

• the topic of your post (i.e. #mondayinspiration)
• the props in your photo (i.e. #plants, #fairylights, #books)
• what you are (i.e. #christianauthor, #christianfantasyauthor)
• the products in your photo (for example, when I use my Storiarts gloves in a photo, I’ll use the hashtag #storiarts)
• (if you’re using books) the book title, the author, and the publishing house (if applicable) (i.e. #atimetodie, #nadinebrandes, #enclavepublishing)

Another step you can take to use hashtags to increase your reach: follow relevant hashtags. I follow #christianscifi and #nadinebrandes (and a few others), so posts with these hashtags come up in my home feed, even if they’re from people that I don’t follow. Then I am able to easily engage with people outside my current follower circle by liking and commenting on posts. Then you don’t have to keep looking for other accounts to engage with. They just sort of come to you. 🙂

It’s also important not to only use hashtags that have a super large amount of posts in them. Yours can tend to get lost. Instead do a mix, staying mostly with hashtags that have 50k or less posts. This makes it more likely that your posts will get seen by the people following these hashtags.

Instagram Stories

This was, quite honestly, the most confusing part of Instagram for me. I’ve found this feature to be a great way to capture in-the-moment part of the day. Just a quick sharing of a moment. Stories disappear after 24 hours.

Common ways I see Stories being used:

• Let people know about a new post (by including the post photo and covering most or all of it with a “new post” GIF)
• sharing a moment of the day (i.e. morning coffee, writing time, relaxing time, etc.)
• answering questions in a template (very common in Stories. And fun 😉 )
• sharing quotes or encouragement
• short videos

I can’t provide much more advice on this topic, because I’m still trying to figure it out myself. 😉 But just experiment a bit with it and you’ll catch on quick!

Interacting With People

It’s crucial that you respond to every single comment you get on your posts. Actively interacting with your followers, people you follow, and some strangers will improve your relationships, increase your reach, and up your follower count.

For the Bookstagrammer…

Yes, you can be a bookstagrammer as an author 😉 (I mean, LOOK AT NADINE BRANDES!!!). If you don’t already know, the bookstagram community is basically a community of book lovers on Instagram that dedicate pretty much all of their posts to books. If you’re wanting to get into this side of things, here are some post ideas:

• Your favorite books by genre
• Your favorite authors
• Your favorite books by color
• Your favorite covers
• Your favorite childhood books
• Favorite books by season
• Book reviews
• Book hauls
• New releases
• Bookish merch
• Celebrate a book’s release birthday
• Favorite indie books/favorite traditionally published books
• and more. 😉

Be sure to use the hashtag #bookstagram in these posts, while also using smaller bookish hashtags.

In all of this…

…remember your WHY. It’s so easy to get caught up in the business-facts-and-numbers-and-stats-and-strategy side of things that you sometimes forget WHY you’re doing what you’re doing. I’m doing it because I want to reach people’s hearts with my stories and impact the world. Don’t forget that everyone you encounter is, yes, a potential future reader, but also a potential friend. Be authentic and real. Be you. 😉

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Okay, so I just threw A LOT of information at you! I know this is longer than what I usually do, but it’s all info that is crucial for beginning on Instagram. If you have any question about today’s topic, then feel free to ask them in the comments.